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December 30, 2012

[Outside the tribal
belt, the issue of civilian casualties has dominated the debate about American
drones. At least 473 noncombatants have been killed by C.I.A.-directed strikes
since 2004, according to monitoring groups — a toll frequently highlighted by
critics of the drones like the Pakistani politician Imran Khan. Still, strike
accuracy seems to be improving: just seven civilian deaths have been confirmed
in 2012, down from 68 the previous year, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which has
been critical of the Obama administration’s drone campaign.]

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — They are dead men talking, and they know it. Gulping nervously,
the prisoners stare into the video camera, spilling tales of intrigue, betrayal
and paid espionage on behalf of the United States. Some speak in trembling
voices, a glint of fear in their eyes. Others look resigned. All plead for
their lives.

“I am a spy and I took
part in four attacks,” said Sidinkay, a young tribesman who said he was paid
$350 to help direct C.I.A. drones to their targets in
Pakistan’s tribal belt. Sweat glistened on his forehead; he rocked nervously as
he spoke. “Stay away from the Americans,” he said in an imploring voice. “Stay
away from their dollars.”

Al Qaeda and
the Taliban have
few defenses against the American drones that endlessly prowl the skies over
the bustling militant hubs of North and South Waziristan in northwestern
Pakistan, along the Afghan border. C.I.A. missiles killed at least 246 people
in 2012, most of them Islamist militants, according to watchdog groups that
monitor the strikes. The dead included Abu Yahya al-Libi, the Qaeda ideologue
and deputy leader.

Despite the
technological superiority of their enemy, however, the militants do possess one
powerful countermeasure.

For several years now,
militant enforcers have scoured the tribal belt in search of informers who help
the C.I.A. find and kill the spy agency’s jihadist quarry. The militants’
technique — often more witch hunt than investigation — follows a
well-established pattern. Accused tribesmen are abducted from homes and
workplaces at gunpoint and tortured. A sham religious court hears their case,
usually declaring them guilty. Then they are forced to speak into a video
camera.

The taped confessions,
which are later distributed on CD, vary in style and content. But their endings
are the same: execution by hanging, beheading or firing squad.

In Sidinkay’s last
moments, the camera shows him standing in a dusty field with three other
prisoners, all blindfolded, illuminated by car headlights. A volley of shots
rings out, and the three others are mowed down. But Sidinkay, apparently
untouched, is left standing. For a tragic instant, the accused spy shuffles
about, confused. Then fresh shots ring out and he, too, crumples to the ground.

These macabre recordings
offer a glimpse into a little-seen side of the drone war in Waziristan, a
paranoid shadow conflict between militants and a faceless American enemy in
which ordinary Pakistanis have often become unwitting victims.

Outside the tribal belt,
the issue of civilian casualties has dominated the debate about American
drones. At least 473 noncombatants have been killed by C.I.A.-directed strikes
since 2004, according to monitoring groups — a toll frequently highlighted by
critics of the drones like the Pakistani politician Imran Khan. Still, strike
accuracy seems to be improving: just seven civilian deaths have been confirmed
in 2012, down from 68 the previous year, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which has
been critical of the Obama administration’s drone campaign.

And civilian lives are
threatened by militants, too. As the American campaign has cut deeply into the
commands of both the Taliban and Al Qaeda, drone-fearing militants have turned
to the local community for reprisals, mounting a concerted campaign of fear and
intimidation that has claimed dozens of lives and further stressed the already
fragile order of tribal society.

The video messages from
accused spies are intended to send a stark message, regardless of whether
innocents are among those caught up in the deadly dragnet. The confessions are
delivered at gunpoint, and usually follow extensive torture, including hanging
from hooks for up to a month, human rights groups say.

“In every civilized
society, the penalty for spying is death,” said a senior commander with the
Pakistani Taliban, speaking on the condition of anonymity from Waziristan.

Although each of myriad
militant factions in Waziristan operates its own death squads, by far the most
formidable is the Ittehad-e-Mujahedeen Khorasan, a shadowy group that experts
consider to be Al Qaeda’s local counterintelligence wing. Since it emerged in
2009, the group, which is led by Arab and Uzbek militants, has carefully
cultivated a sinister image through video theatrics and the ruthless
application of violence.

Black-clad Khorasan
militants, their faces covered in balaclavas, roam across North Waziristan in
jeeps with tinted windows. In one video clip from 2011, Khorasan fighters are
seen searching traffic under a cluster of palm trees outside Mir Ali, a
notorious militant hub. Then they move into the town center, distributing
leaflets to shoppers, before executing three men outside a gas station.

“Spies, your days are
numbered because we are carrying out raids,” chants the video soundtrack.

Thought to number dozens
of militants, the Khorasan cooperates closely with the Afghan warlord
Jalaluddin Haqqani, who is based in North Waziristan. A sister organization in
Afghanistan has been responsible for 250 assassinations and
executions, according to American military intelligence.

“Everyone’s frightened
of them,” said Mustafa Qadri of Amnesty International, which recently published
a report on human rights abuses by both the military and militants in the
tribal belt. “No one really knows who is behind them. But they are very
professional.”

The videotapes produced
by Khorasan and other groups offer a stark, if one-dimensional, picture of
their spy hunt. A review of 20 video confessions by The New York Times, as well
as interviews with residents of the tribal belt, suggest the suspects are
largely poor tribesmen — barbers, construction workers, Afghan migrants.

The jittery accounts of
the accused men reveal dramatic stories of espionage: furtive meetings with
handlers; disguising themselves as Taliban fighters, fruit sellers or even
heroin addicts; payment of between $150 and $450 per drone strike; and placing
American-supplied electronic tracking devices, often wrapped in cigarette foil,
near the houses and cars of Qaeda fugitives.

But the videos are also
portraits of fear and confusion, infused with poignant, even darkly comic,
moments. Curiously, some say they have been hired through Pakistani military
intelligence officials who are identified by name, directly contradicting the
Pakistan government’s official stance that it vehemently opposes the drone
strikes. An official with Inter-Services Intelligence, speaking on the
customary condition of anonymity, said any suggestion of Pakistani cooperation
was “hogwash.”

Quite clearly, the video
accounts are stage-managed. Behind the camera, an unseen militant prompts the
prisoners to speak. Some say they have been told they will be freed if they
tell the “truth.” Others are preparing for death. “Tell my parents that I owe
250 rupees to a guy from our village,” Hamidullah, a bearded Afghan migrant,
said in a quavering voice. “After I die, please repay the money to him.”

Death is not inevitable,
however. Suleman Wazir, a 20-year-old goat herder from South Waziristan, said
militants abducted him in September on suspicion of being a spy. “They held me
in a dungeon and flogged me hundreds of times. They told me I would die,” he
said in a video interview recorded through an intermediary in Waziristan. But
after some weeks, Mr. Wazir said, his relatives intervened through tribal
elders and persuaded the Taliban of his innocence. Upon presentation of five
goats to the militants, he was set free, he said.

The Taliban and Al Qaeda
have become obsessed with “patrai” — a local word for a small metallic device,
now synonymous with the tiny electronic tagging devices that militants believe
the C.I.A. uses to find them. In 2009 Mr. Libi, the Qaeda deputy, published an
article illustrated with photographs of such devices, warning of their dangers.
He was killed in a drone strike near Mir Ali in June.

This year, the Taliban
released a video purporting to show one such device: an inchlong electronic
circuit board, cased in transparent plastic, that, when connected to a
nine-volt battery, pulsed with an infrared light. A spokesman for the C.I.A.
declined to comment on details of the drone program. But a former American
intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that
the agency does use such GPS devices, which are commercially available in the
United States through stores that supply the military.

As a result, the Taliban
are adapting. Wali ur-Rehman, a senior Taliban commander, said in an interview
last spring that his fighters had started to scan all visiting vehicles with
camcorders set to infrared mode in order to detect potential tracking devices.

Still, the Taliban may
be overestimating the importance of such devices. A former Obama administration
official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the classified
nature of the subject, said that satellites and aerial surveillance planes —
whose powerful sensors sweep up mobile phone, Internet and radio intercepts
from the tribal belt — provide much of the drone program’s electronic
intelligence. Other experts said many American intelligence informers in
Waziristan are recruited in Afghanistan, where a C.I.A. base in the border
province of Khost was attacked by a suicide bomber three years ago.

On the ground, though,
the spy war has further destabilized a tribal society already dangerously
weakened by years of violence. Paranoia about the profusion of tracking chips
has fueled rivalries between different clans who accused one another of
planting the devices.

“People start to think
that other tribes are throwing the chips. There is so much confusion and
mistrust created within the tribal communities. Drone
attacks have intensified existing mistrust,” one tribesman told
researchers from Columbia Law School, as part of a study into the effects of
the drone campaign, last May.

The Khorasan’s brutality
has alienated even some of its putative allies. In September 2011, Hafiz Gul
Bahadur, a leading warlord in North Waziristan, publicly withdrew his support
for the group after coming under pressure from tribal supporters over the
number of apparently innocent tribesmen who had been executed as spies. In a
statement, the Khorasan responded that it would pursue its objectives “at all
costs and not spare anyone.”

Amid the long knives and
paranoia, some tribesmen believe there is no option but to flee. Some of those
accused of espionage run to the gulf states; others make it to the sprawling
slums of the port of Karachi. In an ethnic Pashtun neighborhood of that city,
one elderly man described how he fled with his family after the execution of
his son in 2009.

“I was afraid the
militants would also kill me and my family,” said the man, speaking on the
condition of anonymity.

Still now, his life
remained in danger, he added, because the Taliban believed he was spending what
they said was his son’s ill-gotten money. But it was simply untrue, the old man
insisted: “My son was innocent.”